Public Land Bucks

Public Land Bucks

By Gary Faith

When it comes to chasing of public land whitetail, I am constantly looking for that tip or tactic that is going to drastically swing the momentum of opportunity my way. I’m always searching for the hidden secret that will allow me to be ahead of the curve. Truth be told, I have yet to find it. What I have found though is that I have come across numerous ways to incrementally improve my odds to harvest a buck on a public land hunt. It seems these small details by themself don’t amount to much, but when layered with each other, the effect starts to show itself.

In this constant search for an edge, I have found that I have immersed myself in the whitetail world year round. All year long I am taking in information from podcasts, articles, videos, friends, family, colleagues, or the occasional sporting goods store person. All along, listening and trying to see how their advice applies to my hunting situation. There is no shortage of people out there that have hunting public land whitetails down a whole lot better than I do. I look to these people for information and inspiration. I try to take these little bits that are learned or experienced and apply them to my hunting game in order to help sway the odds ever so slightly in my favor.

The first great way I try to sway the odds, which is fresh in my mind, is doing some summer scouting. This can be as simple or complex as I want to make it. I do a lot of hiking on public during the summer months and scout in the process. Often though it’s just as effective to just drive on the roads around these public areas in the evenings or mornings. Spending this time is going to get me up to speed when I go to step back into the woods come the fall. By late summer the bucks are well along in the antler growth process and are out feeding in the open during the late evenings and early mornings. Alfalfa fields and bean fields are great places to set up and watch bachelor groups of bucks come out and eat. I try to watch the shaded sides of the field, as the bucks will tend to come out on that side to avoid the hot sun. Although it seems that these bachelor groups will always split up, it is nice to be able to get eyes on what bucks are actually living in the area for the most part. This summer scouting gives me a chance to get familiar with the crop rotation for the year on each parcel of public around my area. Not only this, but getting out and exploring these areas allows me to find the numerous food plots that the DNR has scattered throughout the public lands.

Part of this summer scouting also includes putting out trail cameras. Trail cameras are a great way to get an inventory on the bucks that live in the area for that year. Setting the camera up over water or a food source is a great way to pick up velvet bucks cruising around. I will go as far as putting one of my cameras on field scan mode and take pictures of a bean or alfalfa field for the last 2 hours of light to see if I can catch one coming in and out. Trail cameras can be tricky on public, solely for the fact people will steal them. It sucks, but it’s the truth. So when I go to place them, I try to keep this in mind by hiding them or putting them in random spots. Having a lock box and cable is a good idea. Another good idea is to bring in a climbing stick and elevate the camera to 8-10 feet pointing down. Using cameras is not only fun, but also it’s a great way to get outside and do some boots on the ground scouting. Getting a picture of a big velvet buck in August fires me up for the fall as much as anything.

Another detail that I am paying more attention to is the access to the public areas. Not only my access, but also how other hunters have traditionally been accessing that chunk of public. So often, I find that these public properties are getting entered the same way each year by hunters and it has conditioned the deer in that area.

More often then not, this is going to be the easiest access for the land. Being willing to take the long way in and paying attention to the wind as I access has allowed me to get close to bucks numerous times. Last year specifically, I was hunting a plot the DNR had planted. I was accessing this plot by hiking a mile in from an uncommon entrance, with the wind in my favor. I was having incredible luck hunting it, seeing multiple bucks a night. I had a camera out in that plot and got a picture of another hunter that was set up in essentially the same area, but he was hiking the short way through the timber, and along the length of the food plot to get to his stand. The area that he was accessing through was the same area that I would watch these bucks come out of when I would hunt coming in from the other direction. Paying attention to my access for that area allowed me to hunt that food source, without having to put excess pressure on the bucks that lived there.

Along the same lines, I am paying more attention to is other hunters in the area. Making the choice to hunt public land also comes with the choice of hunting that land with others. It can be easy to get bent out of shape if someone walks through your stand setup or if they are parked where you wanted to go. The key is to stay positive and keep moving forward.

In years past I have had hunters unknowingly walk into where I am set up and I decided to move elsewhere afterwards, only to have the move put me in a spot to shoot a nice buck that night. Being able to have multiple spots in mind that work for the conditions that day is going to allow me to bounce back from these interruptions and still be able to have quality hunts.

When hiking through the whitetail woods, I’m always taking note of signs of other hunters having been in the area. I pay attention to how fresh that hunter sign is, and how long ago it seemed that they may have been there. Just because someone else is hunting in that general area does not mean that they have been there recently, or that it is ruined. Finding this hunter sign though does mean I may have to take a different approach in order to be successful inside of that hunting pressure. Big bucks are so educated to hunting pressure that they will actually bed in a location where they can watch the hunters as they approach from the popular parking areas. Approaching public land thinking about how the pressure of other hunters is going to affect the bucks is going to help move the needle in the right direction.

My final way I have tried to sway the odds to my favor is by being mobile with my hunting setup. For bow hunting I have gravitated to hanging, hunting, and pulling my tree stand on every hunt that I went on. There is no doubt that it is a lot more work than just going to a pre-hung stand and climbing in to hunt. The upside though is that it opens up a whole new spectrum of opportunity. Being mobile allows me to hunt on the spot if I sight a buck on the way in or find fresh sign that is undeniable a buck close. I can’t pretend that it does not get old hanging and pulling the stand again and again. I continue to do so though because when it does pay out, it is all worth it. When it comes to hanging the stand repeatedly you will find that you get pretty good at it over time. One important thing is to take the time to silence the metal parts on the stand and climbing stick combination. It is truly painful to ring a buckle against the side of a climbing stick after having taken your time to get to that point. With a little Internet research one can find that there are many different ways to quiet these metal parts down. With that said, if the hunting situation calls for sitting on the ground, I will definitely do that. At times, the wind or the lack of a good tree is just not going to work for a tree stand. I try to avoid getting locked into the area or spot I may have picked in my mind on the drive there and am willing to change that plan as I am presented with new information.

Chasing public land bucks can seem to be an uphill battle at times. The whitetail woods tend to have an incredible ability to humble me right when I think I have something figured out. One thing for certain is that it is an ever-changing landscape that these bucks live in, and I enjoy trying to step into their world and figure them out. Paying attention to the details and always being open to learning something new is only going to make me a better outdoorsman. As I progress as a hunter, I am going to continue to search for the secret to figure them all out. Realistically though, I will happily take the little bits of information along the way just the same.